The sharing economy has the potential to provide new pathways to insurance companies.
According to a recent report, in the UK alone, the sharing economy will grow at a rate of 30 percent per year over the next 10 years. Europe is no exception. Luckily for the insurance industry, the success of the sharing economy largely depends on protecting peoples’ items in order to secure their trust. That is why it may be helpful to study the strategies used by insurance startups to provide innovative services.
Along with large organizations such as Airbnb and Uber, many companies offer renters home insurance powered by tech. This kind of startup uses artificial intelligence and chatbots to deliver insurance policies and handle claims for its users on desktop and mobile without employing insurance brokers. A faster and simpler way to stay close to the costumer, which is one of the fundamentals of sharing economy apps.
Nowadays many startups are in fact making insurance more customer-friendly by using an incredibly innovative peer-to-peer model. P2P insurance, for example, connects groups of customers and facilitates a yearly cashback when they and their connections remain claims-free. As claims are made, the cashback decreases, for both the customer and their connections.
The strength of these kinds of new insurance services is that they also provide coverage for “anything that’s important to you at any time with just a few clicks”. They just need your name, address, email and information about the product. A new approach that is also changing the customer experience. Technology enables customers to manage their insurance portfolios digitally via smartphone or PC. So they basically save time and feel that they can manage their portfolios more freely and in a better way. That is why many newly established organizations are testing innovative robot-technology, to provide personalized insurance. These examples clearly demonstrate the ample opportunities that technology creates for insurance organizations in the sharing economy.
